Grafos started as a side project with the main objective to develop tools and algorithms for large-scale graph mining and graph analytics. Grafos comes with two components:

The Okapi ML Library; the first library with algorithms built on top of Apache Giraph.

The Real-Time Giraph; a graph analytics engine that brings analysis of dynamic graphs – made easy.

I have already received some questions about Okapi and here’s what I said.

Why Okapi? Okapi is the missing piece from the puzzle of graph analytics. Graph processing systems vary. Models, paradigms and techniques diverge. However, graph processing algorithms are endangered species. Well, not for long 🙂 Okapi provides algorithms ready to be used and analyse large-scale graphs in the most efficient way.

Why Okapi instead of Mahout? Mahout is a well established ML library that follows the MapReduce paradigm. Okapi aims to be an ML and Graph Analytics library following Giraph. (Friendly reminder: MapReduce becomes suboptimal when it comes to iterative algorithms [yes really], while Giraph embraces iterations and nails it with large-scale graphs.)

What does Okapi provide? So far, Okapi addresses two areas of interest; Collaborative Filtering and Graph Analytics. Documentation is provided along with the growing codebase. Here’s a direct link to Okapi. More algorithms are yet to come – and you can be part of it!

Is Real-Time Giraph possible? The limit is one’s imagination. Luckily, researchers in Telefonica set the limit far away and dare to innovate. As Claudio aptly explains, this modified version of the Giraph runtime aims to run “real-time computations of graph algorithms for event-based workloads. Without changing your existing code for offline analysis.“. This component is yet to be published. Wait for it – or do not wait and become a tester by dropping a line!

The reactions and responses from institutions, researchers, and colleagues have been motivating. Okapi is open-source and anyone can download it or clone it. Give it a try! In the Okapi Mailing List you can post questions, find answers and provide any kind of feedback (yes negative as well).

We celebrate the launch of Grafos with the 1st Okapi Hackathon! The Hackathon starts on Wednesday, March 26th and ends on Thursday evening, March 27th. Location: at Telefonica in the amazing city of Barcelona. I wish I could be there these two days. We hope and believe that this Hackathon will be a great opportunity for brainstorming, growing the Okapi codebase, improving and welcoming new friends and collaborators.

We are super happy to welcome our first users and we are looking forward to growing the Okapi family!